Post by thorneel on Oct 23, 2016 19:35:20 GMT

User interface is often a thankless job: the better it works, the less users will pay attention to it. Nonetheless, it is a fundamental part of any consumer software, and a deceptively hard problem to solve - major corporation routinely ship products that violate basic UI tenets that are taught literally in the first two hours of any UI course.Now, qswitched concentrated on the core systems of CoaDE so far, and it is understandable that the UI had to take a backseat, beyond the required minimal functionalities. Now that the game is out on the shelves, however, the UI will have to be improved at some point. And user feedback is capital for that.

This is an attempt at listing outstanding issues with the user interface of the ship design and module design tools, as well as example solutions.Feel free to post issues or links threads about issues and/or solutions, I will try and keep the list updated. (Please avoid debating solutions themselves here, though.)

Note that this is about User Interface, so even if new functionalities can be asked for, they have to solve UI problems, not change or add game mechanics themselves. (For example, asking for a Weapon Range to test-fire weapons has its place here, but asking for more armour layers would be a change in game mechanics.)Problems that have been corrected will be struck and put at the end.

Design in general:

When changing something (be it a number, a position, an element...) by mistake, there is no way to undo said change - Add an Undo function!! And a Redo one, ideally

Numerous error messages can fill the error zone, requiring it to be quite big for all to be visible - Make error boxes thinner - Allow for minimizing error boxes

It is impossible to get rid of error messages that are wished to be ignored - Add an option to minimise an error message

What are all those materials anyway? - Add a short description of the material in its description - Add a Wikipedia link, similarly to the briefing reading material

Gimbals angles can be hard to visualize, which can lead to ships with blind spots or not all weapons covering the intended direction - In the visualisation window, add an optional gimbals cone

Testing warheads and projectiles is a pain: its effects and behaviour have to be deduced from their effects on targets - which is particularly difficult for Nuclear Fragmentation warheads (nicknamed NEFP), whose actual behaviour is already very difficult to deduce - Add a function to show the effects of a warhead explosion, with the produced fragments and their states, speed, kinetic energy...

In several places, elements are listed by alphabetic order while often beginning with a number, for example a power number. This leads to confusion as smaller numbers like 90 are before larger numbers like 200. - Replace hard-written numbers by a field containing the relevant value, and order with this number - Give ordering options, for example power usage

Editing ship or module names require to edit the element itself, which can be tedious - Add an option to edit the name directly from the list

Editing text fields is crude, with few of the options that are generally available on this type of field - Add an option to select multiple characters, in addition to simply the cursor - Add an option to switch between insert and rewrite mode - Add common shortcuts like shift-arrows, shift-home/end, ctrl-a, ctrl-z...

When building particularly big ships or components, the camera sometimes exits the Sky Cylinder - Increase the size of the Sky Cylinder - Use an infinitely distant Skybox

Ship design:

The angle changes with steps that are not a multiple of the degrees - Have degree or half-degree steps - Use degree instead of radiant as the number used, so the number typed is coherent with the number displayed

When changing an angle by directly typing a number, said number has to be in Radians instead of Degrees as is normally shown - Change it so what is typed is interpreted in degrees - Display both in Radians and Degrees

Groups of elements are often used together, and putting each individually is tedious - Add a function for saving module groups that can be added to a ship en bloc

When several elements are put on a line, it is required to change the angle of each one individually when rotating them, which is tedious - Add an option to group elements together - Add an option to add elements longitudinally in addition to radially for one element set

Recreating armour schemes for each ship is tedious - Add a function for a way to save armour schemes, so they can be applied to new ships, similarly to a module group (see above)

When a module is imperfect for this ship but used by another, duplicating the module and switching it is unwieldy - Add a "duplicate design" button on the modules used on the ship

When designing side-facing ships, changing the radial percentage of the armour changes the direction the ship (and every single element on it) is facing - Add a start/end option on the radial percentage, similarly to the start/end option for the longitudinal percentage

Lining elements on the longitudinal axis at an arbitrary angle is a pain - Add a "number of elements" option for the long axis, in addition to the "number of elements" radial option, with an option for determining the spacing

Lining elements on the radial axis, without distributing them evenly across the entire circle, is a pain (for example for weapon banks on side-facing ships) - Add a "spacing" option (with a "evenly distributed" mode by default) to change the distance between each element, the centre of the line is considered for angle (instead of, say, the left-most or right-most element)

Positioning elements on the hull is fiddly and there is no sense of scale - Add a visual grid - Add a ruler - Add a "snap mode" with greater distance between steps (for example, corresponding to the steps when using the up/down arrows) - Add a "snap mode" where elements stick to each-other as close as possible without causing errors

Making elements not intersect can be very fiddly, and elements collision doesn't always correspond to their displayed model - Add a function to "snap" the element to the closer free space - When using the "add another one" function to duplicate elements, add it just far enough so it is not intersecting - Add an option to display the collision box of the eleemnts

Fire-testing ships requires going to the sandbox, setting an encounter and then manoeuvring to intercept/flyby, which is tedious - Add a Tactical Mode to the sandbox, going directly to a tactical combat, with option to add more ships, other ship models, target ships, initial orders (including deploying drones) and relative speed modifiable --- Have it work for missiles and drones as well - Makes the Sandbox (with the ship selected) directly available from the Ship Design menu

When a component has several ways to draw power (weapon, turret, loader...), only the highest one is indicated in the power consumption, meaning a weapon can actually have insufficient power to both aim and fire - Add a second part to the bar showing the total consumption of all the elements

When a radiator is insufficient for cooling a component down, only the remaining heat is displayed - Display both the total heat to dissipate and the still non-dissipated heat

When a radiator is used, how much heat it is dissipating is not shown, and its dissipation capacity can only be seen from the "replace element" menu - Display the dissipated heat, capacity per radiator and total capacity (in case of multiple radiators)

Maximising the kinetic energy or momentum is difficult as it has to be calculated by hand (particularly important for KKV missiles) - Add an indicator of delta kinetic energy and delta momentum along with dV - Add in the tooltip that kinetic energy is maximized if the mass ratio is e² and momentum if the mass ratio is e (see here)

Ship mass ratio for drop tanks only indicates the drop tank propellant/total mass, making the total propellant/total mass actual mass ratio difficult to calculate - Add the total mass ratio using all tanks (drop or fixed)

For ships with many parts, the part list becomes cluttered and hard to read - Add filtering options - Add an option to collapse multiple instances of the same part - Add an option to collapse a type of parts (powerplants, lasers, all weapons...) - Decrease the size of a module box in the list

When using multiple engines or propellants, the dV indicator doesn't show actual dV per engine/propellant - Add multiple dV indicators per propellant type, then per engine type for each propellant (assuming all the propellant is used with this one engine type)

When using bipropellant engines, there is no indication of whether the fuel load corresponds to the fuel consumption ratio - Indicate what excess fuel will be left once all of the scarcest fuel type is consumed by the engine type --- In case of multiple bipropellant types (which may both use the same fuel) or even for possible tripropellant engines, consume each propellant in scarcity order until no engine can run, then show what propellants are left --- Allow to decide in which order engines are fired, or whether they are all fired at the same time for the test

The function to put two different module sets at the end of a ship is both non-obvious and fiddly to use - Have "slots" at each end of the ship, where elements can be put - Have the elements visually circling each-other instead of clipping through each-other

Acceleration displayed in g can be problematic as some are trained to use m/s² - Add an option to show acceleration in g, in m/s² or both

Module design:

Module design can be overwhelming at first, particularly for the more complex modules like lasers - Add tutorials for designing modules - Add more indications of what is having an effect on what, and what indicators mean what

Simple items like fuel tanks, radiation shields and spacers require making a new module for each variant, which is unwieldy and can clutter the module list - Add a "new module" button for each type of module directly in the ship design screen - Give options to modify some parameters of a module directly from the ship design screen - for those simple designs, it would be all of the parameters. --- Variants can be saved as new modules, or are one-time-only variants for this ship --- Variants can either be saved as visible module, or hidden module to avoid clutter of the list --- Modules are shown as "module lines", each with several variants - Don't make them modules, and instead put all the options in the ship design when one is used

The module list is cluttered - Add options to sort and filter - Group modules per variants, so several minor changes from one module only appears as one entry in the main list

Some modules are hard to differentiate - Add more description to the modules in the list, either with tooltip, expanding box or directly in the box itself (which will have to be bigger, some names are already cut due to their length)

The giant list of materials is scary and hard to navigate - Add options to sort the list - this may require a way to display the list in a window instead of a simple combo-box - Add filters by properties to the list

It is complicated to compare the performances of two states (materials used, numbers...) in the module designer - Add a "compare" function, where the current settings are saved and shown and compared to subsequently modified settings --- Allow for saving as many times as wished, and optionally keep them as module variants - When mousing over an arrow, a bar or any function that changes the current state, show what would change, by how much and in which direction (+XX, -XX, red/green?) if the user pressed the mouse button there

Searching for the local maximum on a property number is tedious - Add an option to jump to the local maximum of the property in function of one element, with optional limits (to avoid values that are impractical for other reasons) - Show a map of the values on the range of this property as a graph, with options to choose the local maximum/minimum on it - with zones causing a warning and error in yellow and red --- Optionally, allow for two-dimensional displays by selecting two values --- Use it for discrete properties like materials as well

Field-testing weapons require mounting them on a test ship, setting an encounter in the sandbox, manoeuvring the ship to get an interception/flyby - Add a "test range" option: a tactical encounter with the weapon mounted on a test ship and a ship as a target

When using a Payload, there is no indication on how much pressure it can take when fired from a gun, or what is influencing its sturdiness - Add a resistance stat in Ship Design

There is no way to know resistance to pressure, temperature and other factors from each element until it is throwing an error - When mousing over a property, shows all the stats that can cause a possible error, as well as the condition it has to survive to by comparison (for example, gun barrel shows X MPa / Y MPa)

The graphics showing effectiveness of a component (heat dissipation per temperature, weapon cross-section-to-hit per range...) is fiddly to read for precise values - Add a display giving values for specific, user-defined values --- Add an option to put "fixed points" on one axis or the other, which displays the result for this value (or the value for this result) even when not pointing the mouse at it

Reusing particularly effective specific settings, for example parts of lasers or reactors, can be tedious - Add a function to save "submodules", composed of a specific set of values for a module - those should be cross-compatible between modules with similar values (like pumps or reaction wheels)

The optimal radiator temperature of a fission generator is always 3/4 of the thermocouple inlet temperature (see here). There is no indication of this or what the temperature is in the generator designer - Add this info on the tooltip (along with the 'run as hot as possible' tip) - Add an indicator of what said temperature is in function of the other one

There is no indication of the lifetime of a reactor, apart from a binary +/- 6 months - Add an indicator of the reactor life

There is no indication of the radiator surface needed when modifying a reactor design - Add a radiator surface needed by the reactor (ideal case of a biface radiator with no interferences) - Add an indicator of how massive and expensive would a radiator of a specific selectable type (composition, thickness, armour) would be - Add an indicator of how many of a type of radiator would be needed, along with their mass and costFor bipropellants, there is no indication on the stochoimetric ratio slider which side is what - Add "fuel-rich" and "oxidiser-rich" on each side - Add the name of the chemicals on each side

There is no way to determine in what ship designs a module is used, and the only (non-obvious) indicator of whether it is used at all whether the "delete" option available or not - Show the number of ship designs that are using this module - Add an option to show all ship designs (with links to said designs), for example by expanding the aforementioned indicator

There is no way to replace a module everywhere with an improved module, bar modifying said module or replacing it in each ship design instance - Add an option to replace a module with another, with preemptive indications of the effects on the modified ships (module size change, error/warnings...)

There is no indication of what are the relationships between the different inputs and outputs - Add an "expanded model" where all inputs, outputs and equations resulting in the latter are visible

Strategic manoeuvring

When planning movement from far away (for better dV efficiency), tweaking manoeuvres until perfect trajectory is a pain - When the interception/flyby option is given, give it from any point of the trajectory - Give an option to snap intercept when close enough - Add several levels of movement for large and fine corrections - Add number indications for each of the three movement axis, that can both be rewritten and moved with arrows - Have an option to move the trajectory itself along the movement it would have on one axis --- Have the closest point visible, and have a line drawn for closest point positions depending on one selected axis; have the closest point moveable on this line --- Have a surface drawn by the variation of closest point on two axis simultaneously --- Have the surface movable by changing the third axis --- Have the surface determined by either the closest point or a given point in time

By how much manoeuvre change per mouse movement is incoherent and fiddly - Have an indicator of how much it will change at a given time - Have the mouse cursor and axis movement always visible - Have a less irregular movement rate

When planning precise movement from far away, the ideal camera angle/zoom to observe the effects doesn't always contain the manoeuvre bars - Add manoeuvre commands on the left bar itself, so it is always visible

When launching multiple waves of missiles or drones, creating the manoeuvre for each missile is a pain - Add an option to automatically intercept (similar to what the AI already uses) --- Attribute a dV budget (default dV determined at missile/drone creation?) --- Attribute a time to impact - Give an option to prepare launch+manoeuvre in advance

When a target is manoeuvring, having each minute a "Target evaded intercept" and having to redo interception is a pain - Have an option to automatically correct to keep interception despite target manoeuvre --- Attribute a dV budget to correction

With non-instant manoeuvres in curved trajectories close to massive bodies, movement-relative acceleration (for example pure-retrograde) require to create many small manoeuvres - Add an option to have manoeuvre movement relative to the trajectory

When attempting an intercept to an aggressive opponent, it can be difficult to guess what manoeuvre it will attempt (mitigated by the so far weak AI) - Add an option to plan manoeuvres to enemy fleets to see what trajectories are possible and how much dV they would cost

As there is little direct control on many weapon ranges and the maximum weapon range determines initial engagement distance, the only efficient way to proceed is to put a "fake" laser or hyper-range magnetic/black box gun to force engagement from further, then use the "ignore range" commands as wished - Add an option to arbitrarily change range of the weapons in combat (with modifiable weapon ranges in module design) - Add an option to enter combat at any range desired from the strategic map - Change the hit percentage threshold for projectile guns, so for example a fast-firing gun is still considered in range if 1% of the projectiles hit, instead of the default 1/2 (?) - For projectile guns with active payload (missiles, drones), take into account the performance of the payload

Combat

Some ships, missile or drones require different default orders which have to be given at the beginning of each mission or launch - Add an option to set default orders, dodging, active systems or ignore range --- Add an option to choose the initial default state in module and ship design, in addition to combat

Manually giving new orders as the situation unfolds can be tedious - Give an option to plan orders in advance --- Have varied triggers like distance, disabled allied/enemy modules/ships... --- Have custom control groups that can be triggered at any time, similarly to KSP control groups --- Have default orders and control groups for ships, to avoid recreating them at the beginning of each mission or combat

It can be difficult to see what weapon destroyed what and in how many shots, and what happened in a combat in general - Have a summary of what happened during the combat --- Have a chronology of the combat: initial positions and velocities, what started firing at what from what distance and what relative velocities (tangential and radial) --- Have statistics on how many shot were fired by each weapon with statistics on hit percentage in varied conditions (relative speed, distance...), how many hits were sustained by armour or modules with what results...

Anti-module weapons like lasers will ineffectively spray enemy armour unless given orders to aim at modules - in practice requiring to target most modules on all enemy ships - Add a "fire at modules" mode, with default that can be decided on module (or even ship) design and changed like any order - Add module priorities --- Add module firing orders and priorities per weapons (individuals, group on one ship, group on a ship group, group on all ships...) - Add a "fire at fixed point" mode so the weapon will concentrate on one point of the armour until pierced, instead of spraying it

Managing drones in anything but a small number of groups of five or en bloc is unwieldy, as each individual drone/group of five has to be inividually managed - Allow arbitrarily-sized groups --- Allow for groups of varied sizes - Add mouse rectangle selection and add/remove elements, as per RTS conventionsIt is difficult to evaluate the distance of displayed elements (ships, derelicts, celestial bodies) - When pointing the mouse at an element, display the distance to the camera in addition to its name --- For celestial bodies, display the distance to the closest point of the surface

When close to a celestial body, there is no indication of its actual distance (even the displayed surface is often lower than the actual impact surface) - Display celestial bodies in the right screen - Have the displayed surface correspond to the impact surface - Have a mesh surface indicate the actual impact surface

It is not obvious that we can move the camera from pointing at the ships with shift-WASD - Add camera movement in tactical mode in the tutorial - first mission

When planning an intercept, it is difficult to guess what the closest approach will be, as the given distance is at the moment of intercept - Add an indicator of closest approachIt is impossible to watch both allied and enemy ships at the same time - Add a split-screen option

Campaign and Sandbox

Stock and custom ships are mixed in the list, which is incoherent with other lists and makes searching for one particular ship - Separate stock and custom ships like in the Ship Design list - Add sorting and filtering options

Switching ships between allied and enemy side to test each one against the AI is tedious, particularly for fleet vs fleet engagements - Add an option to switch ships between the two sides

Removed:1.1.0:Numerous error messages cannot be all visible at the same time, due to the maximum size of the error display zone, requiring to scroll downThe left panel sometimes cuts info, like the name text field, or the fields listing mass/price decompositionCustom modules are used more often than stock modules, but they are below and require more scrollingWhen using a component multiple times, the energy breakdown only shows consumption as if there was only one of those, making calculations for multiple weapons or engines complicatedWith multiple instances of the same heat-producing element (longitudinal stacking), the red bar indicating waste heat takes into account only one set, instead of the total of all elementsShip acceleration is with full tanks, there is no indication of what the acceleration becomes when the ship empties outThe only way to add more than five armour layers to a ship is by modifying the design filesThere is no indication of the efficiency of railguns and coilguns, which is complicated to calculateThere is no indication of the kinetic energy or momentum of the gun projectileWhen fiddling with manoeuvres, changing the initial point of the manoeuvre forces to recreate it entirelyIn planetary systems with multiple moons, using secondary moons for slingshot manoeuvres has to be attempted blindlyIR and UV lasers do not show when they are firing

1.0.7:There is no indication how close the fleet will pass the target byTo be effective, missile homing must be stopped while they still have enough dV, as controlled homing generally doesn't conserve enough of itWhen a module is imperfect, going to module design and searching for the right module is unwieldy[...] even worse, for higher degree count, the display is rounded to the nearest unit or even the nearest tens!Some material statistics can only be seen from the option when the list is open, instead of the tooltip from the selected materialWhen changing property numbers, the bars lack precision and it may require pressing the arrows many times to get the result wishedWhen numbers are big, it is impossible to change them unit by unit, instead of ten by ten or more

Post by jonen on Oct 23, 2016 19:48:09 GMT

The option to manually type in numbers instead of manipulating a slider would be appreciated. (I mean, you can do it by editing the userdesigns.txt, but if you could do it in the designer it should prevent you from entering an invalid number).

Post by erin on Oct 23, 2016 20:08:26 GMT

Add a ruler and maybe a grid, please. I would like to be able to place guns at precise positions on the outside of a ship. And in general it would be helpful to feel out the shape of the vessel while I'm constructing it

Enable saving/loading KSP-esque parts subassemblies could be useful, similar to the saving/loading armor configurations

Post by argonbalt on Oct 23, 2016 20:37:14 GMT

Anterior multiplicity of weapon mounts and positions. So having numerous frontal facing weapons of various types and not reserving only a single "front" spot for design. Instead it could be treated like the side length of the ship and have it's own left/right up/down positioning for individual components.

Post by thorneel on Oct 23, 2016 21:51:34 GMT

Ordered in General, Ship design and Module design

Added:Numerous error messages cannot be all visible at the same timePositioning elements on the hull is fiddly and there is no sense of scaleFire-testing ships is tediousWhen numbers are big, it is impossible to change them unit by unitField-testing weapons

Thanks for the grid and steps, I had missed it

Something wrong with the UI? Let me know, I'll add it to the UI Thread

Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 24, 2016 19:37:38 GMT

Being able to drag maneuver nodesbeing able to see distance at interceptbeing able to see relative inclination of orbitsability to select orbits for all ships in sand boxsome sort of info for what broke on a system

So that way we can see what part of the weapon or engine failed so that we can address that failure point

Post by jonen on Oct 24, 2016 19:41:56 GMT

Distance at which the intercept starts is, IIRC, a bit over the maximum range of the longest range active weapon of either party. (Not sure about missiles against unarmed targets.)

More relevant might be "closest approach" (for missiles, you'd want to bring this as close to zero as possible). Having that info may allow you to set up intercepts that (assuming no maneuvering) will leave you coasting past the target in comfortable gun range without straying into their ability to respond.

Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 24, 2016 19:45:13 GMT

Distance at which the intercept starts is, IIRC, a bit over the maximum range of the longest range active weapon of either party. (Not sure about missiles against unarmed targets.)

More relevant might be "closest approach" (for missiles, you'd want to bring this as close to zero as possible). Having that info may allow you to set up intercepts that (assuming no maneuvering) will leave you coasting past the target in comfortable gun range without straying into their ability to respond.

Ah that is what I meant because for missiles the less terminal corrections they need to make the better and when you have a range advantage you want to intercept but keep the closest approach as far away as possible so the enemy needs to work harder to get into range.

Post by trevlite on Oct 24, 2016 20:18:04 GMT

Also some parts of modules like pumps and turrets should be able to be saved as submodules so you can reuse them. Same with reactors that can be used with both engines and power plants and with different bells or thermoelectric and cooling system. It would also be great to save parts of lasers since I have two 1gw lasers that are the same but with different focusing mirror aperture and turret. Being able to optimize the laser without having to copy the changes to another laser would be nice. One way to do this is to have submodukes that can be saved and used in modules and shared between modules even of differing types. There could also be module design plans that if a module uses that plan if sets some of the settings from that plan so that changing the plan would change all of the modules using it (great for altering armor settings for many modules when optimizing anti laser properties of you weapons.

Post by thorneel on Oct 24, 2016 22:33:17 GMT

Added:Some material stats can only be seen from the option when the list is openWhen using a component multiple times, the energy breakdown only shows consumption as if there was only one of thoseWhen a radiator is insufficient for cooling a component down, only the remaining heat is displayedWhen a radiator is used, how much heat it is dissipating is not shown, and its dissipation capacity can only be seen from the "replace element" menuWhen using a Payload, there is no indication on how much pressure it can take when fired from a gun, or what is influencing its sturdiness (this one could have been on ship design, but the problem appears when using it in module design)There is no way to know resistance to pressure, temperature and other factors from each element until it is throwing an errorThe graphics showing effectiveness of a component is fiddly to readReusing particularly effective specific settings can be tedious (good point trevlite )

Added a link toward the Custom Module Name thread

Please continue to bring issues, I probably forgot many more! Even if it feels a bit trivial, improvements in the UI can have surprisingly big effects on user enjoyment. Don't underestimate the one-second, one-click gain on an operation.

captinjoehenryThose for ship operations, not design (as it is where I spend most of my time on this game at the moment). Should I change the title of this thread and make it a general UI thread, or would it be better to have another thread for it?è

Something wrong with the UI? Let me know, I'll add it to the UI Thread

Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 25, 2016 1:01:35 GMT

Added:Some material stats can only be seen from the option when the list is openWhen using a component multiple times, the energy breakdown only shows consumption as if there was only one of thoseWhen a radiator is insufficient for cooling a component down, only the remaining heat is displayedWhen a radiator is used, how much heat it is dissipating is not shown, and its dissipation capacity can only be seen from the "replace element" menuWhen using a Payload, there is no indication on how much pressure it can take when fired from a gun, or what is influencing its sturdiness (this one could have been on ship design, but the problem appears when using it in module design)There is no way to know resistance to pressure, temperature and other factors from each element until it is throwing an errorThe graphics showing effectiveness of a component is fiddly to readReusing particularly effective specific settings can be tedious (good point trevlite )

Added a link toward the Custom Module Name thread

Please continue to bring issues, I probably forgot many more! Even if it feels a bit trivial, improvements in the UI can have surprisingly big effects on user enjoyment. Don't underestimate the one-second, one-click gain on an operation.

captinjoehenryThose for ship operations, not design (as it is where I spend most of my time on this game at the moment). Should I change the title of this thread and make it a general UI thread, or would it be better to have another thread for it?è

Valid distinction and if you want to include them they should be in the same thread as I personally feel that having a master thread for ui changes would be good and if it is pinned then everything related to UI can be discussed in one easy to reach location

Post by trevlite on Oct 25, 2016 1:34:56 GMT

The sliders should have buttons that move them ten times what the current fine manipulation buttons do. If the sliders has three significant digits it should have three buttons to manipulate at each level of accuracy. For the ones that span many orders of magnitude a *10 or /10 option would be nice.

For the tool tips for the material selections it should say what material properties are relevant (besides density and cost) and if it is a clear more is better relationship. Same for some of the sliders, it should say what properties of the module it affects and if affect is monotonic it should say in what direction.

Another feature that would be good to have is to select a slider and one module property like mass or cost and when you change anything it alters that slider so that the property is held constant. As an example for some turbopump application I can select the pumps flow rate (kg/s) and the pumps radius or rotation rate so that I can alter the other so that I can min max the mass or cost. This can also be used to fix the turning rate of a turret and selecting the rotation rate of the reaction wheels so that you can fiddle with the module or try to change the reaction wheel material. This would be good to choose the cheapest material that still gives good turning.